Homeokinesis: The Math That Makes Living Things Special

According to a new Telegraph
UK article, "a deep mathematical analysis of living things has
come up with an insight into why they are special". The research was
done by a researchers at Edinburgh University and the Max Planck
Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. What they've discovered is a
way to make the behavior of artificial and virtual creatures self
organizing and self regulating, allowing them to learn through trial and
error without explicit instructions. The idea is not new and
follows similar research going back to 1990. The article includes
video of virtual dogs learning to jump and virtual humanoid learning to
stand. Previous systems had explicitly encoded goals in the programs as
well as basic instruction on how to move. The new algorithm, called
homeokinesis, has no
predefined goals, and provides no initial information about the virtual
environment, making it more like the natural world. The researchers are
also beginning to experiment with the algorithm in real
robots. For more videos and papers on the new system, see Terra
autonomica - The world of self-organized creatures.